How Much Paint for an 8x8 Room?
Paint needed
1.5 gallons
An 8 by 8 room with eight foot walls, one door, one window, two coats.
When the figures look right, the paint material list downloads as a real PDF with your business details on it, built inside your own browser. Nothing you type is uploaded anywhere.
How that number is worked out
These are the figures this page was built with and every line the calculator produces from them. Change anything above and all of it moves.
- Room perimeter, add all walls32 ft
- Wall height8 ft
- Doors1
- Windows1
- Coats2
- Coverage per gallon350 sq ft
Paint needed1.5 gallons
| Gross wall area | 256 sq ft |
|---|---|
| Less doors and windows | -36 sq ft |
| Net wall area | 220 sq ft |
| Area over 2 coats | 440 sq ft |
| Gallons, exact | 1.26 |
| Buy | 2 gallonsor 1 five gallon pail |
The material list this produces
| Paint, gallons | 2 |
|---|---|
| Primer, gallons (if bare or color change) | 1 |
| Painter's tape, rolls | 1 |
Coats compared
Coats is the input people get wrong, usually by hoping. Same room, one coat to three.
| Coats | Paint needed |
|---|---|
| 1 coat | 0.75 gallons |
| 2 coats | 1.5 gallons |
| 3 coats | 2 gallons |
What else matters here
An eight by eight is a nursery, a home office or a small third bedroom, and at 1.26 gallons for two coats it is a two gallon buy with most of the second gallon left.
Rooms this size are where cutting in dominates the time. The rolling takes twenty minutes; the brush work around the door casing, the window, the baseboard and four ceiling lines takes most of the afternoon, and it is the same amount of brush work whether the room is eight by eight or eight by twenty.
That is worth knowing before quoting one. Pricing a small room on floor area alone loses money, because the labor tracks the perimeter and the number of edges, not the square footage of the floor.
What this calculator assumes
- A door is taken as 21 sq ft and a window as 15 sq ft. Deducting them matters on a small room and barely moves a big one.
- 350 sq ft per gallon is the usual figure on a smooth primed wall. Bare drywall, textured walls and deep color changes all drink more, so drop it to 300 if any of those apply.
- Ceilings and trim are not included. Run the ceiling as its own area.
Questions people ask
How much paint for an 8x8 room?
About 1.26 gallons for two coats on eight foot walls. Buy two gallons rather than a gallon and a quart.
How long does it take to paint an 8x8 room?
Most of a day for one person once cutting in, two coats and drying time between them are counted. The rolling itself is a small part of it.
Why does a small room cost nearly as much to paint?
Because the labor is in the cutting in and the preparation, which follow the perimeter and the number of edges rather than the floor area.
The paint calculator takes any dimensions you like and hands back the same list.